1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for forming plate characters in a half-tone gravure platemaking process.
2. Prior art
FIGS. 2(a) through 2(c) show a process in which a half-tone gravure character (the English letter "A" in this case) is prepared by a conventional method for forming plate characters in a half-tone gravure platemaking process, and then printed.
FIG. 2(a) shows the screened plate character "A". Here, the entire plate character consists of dot-shaped cells which are formed by etching so that they correspond to the dot percentage of the shadow portion of the character.
FIG. 2(b) illustrates a state in which ink has been transferred to the screened plate character "A" illustrated in FIG. 2(a). When this character is transfer-printed onto paper, etc., the ink spreads so that the portion of the blank paper corresponding to the screen lines disappear, thus producing an English letter "A" in which the entire body of the character is black as shown in FIG. 2(c).
Thus, in a conventional process, the plate characters are composed of dot-shaped cells which correspond to the dot percentage of the shadow portion of each character. Accordingly, the outlines of the half-tone gravure characters (printed characters) are notched, so that the quality of the printed characters is inferior to characters printed by typeface printing. This drop in quality is especially conspicuous in the case of small characters.